So, of course, after living a week in its shadows, I couldn’t take it anymore and I had to climb it. The climb looked daunting and seemed incongruous with the estimated 2 hour return time posted at the terminus, but it turned out to be much easier than I originally anticipated. Although, it was very, very hot making the trip up fairly difficult.
The start of the trail winds through a paperbark tree forest with a great array of flora growing amongst the beautiful trees! On the Park’s website, I read that over 700 different plant species grow on this mountain!! It was absolutely beautiful and the trail was well-graded and well-maintained in this section of the hike. It is worth the trip, even if you turn back once you reach the exposed parts of the trail.
The track becomes rocky and steep as you past an old quarry and the craggy vertical cliffs of the mountainside. The views here are worth the climb; you can see as far south as “The Spit” in Mooloolaba and have a lovely view of the coastline from this vantage point.
The trail takes a hard right turn and drastically changes to rock & sand with eucalypts and grass trees. The rock in some sections almost forms perfect columnar stairs. This area is completely exposed and I was absolutely melting trekking up at about 9:30am; I can’t even imagine what it felt like when some of the people that were starting as I was finishing experienced. A wet bandana under my baseball cap gave some relief, but I doused myself with some of my drinking water to cool off.
Supposedly there was only a high of 28 degrees C today, but it felt much hotter on the mountain. It was so hot and I began to notice a distinct smell as I was climbing up. I eventually realized that it smelled like charcoal after a barbie! I definitely felt like a piece of meat being grilled!
I was hoping when I reached the top I would see the Peregine Falcons that live up in the area, but I guess it was too hot for them as well.
As you continue up, there are beautiful views sweeping from Mooloolaba as far as Double Point (the Lighthouse we visited on our Cooloola Safari.) On the summit, there was a small, makeshift memorial to Steve Irwin. It was very heartwarming to see such a lovely tribute in an amazingly beautiful for an outstanding man.
I even called Jon and left him a voicemail saying, “Hey, I can see our house from up here!!”
On the way home, I saw the best sign ever. We have koala crossings, no fire ant crossings, no banana plant crossing, kangaroo crossings, all by our house. But, for some reason, the “AGED CROSSING” cracks me up the most. The graphic on it is pretty funny: a man bent over a walker.
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